There are many free professional development opportunities for colleagues who are looking to learn about educational technologies, online teaching/pedagogy, social media in education and more. For example, eXtension regularly offers short webinars about technology tools (some of which we use here in Wisconsin, some not.) Recently, eXtension hosted a virtual conference online and have made the keynote presentations available. Keynote speakers and topics include Howard Rheingold: “Using Social Media in Learning and Co-learning”, “How to Achieve More Mind Reach while increasing your reputation and creating something of value”, Paulette Robinson: “Out of this World: Virtual Worlds in Government”, Clay Shirky: “Social Media, Curating, and Convening: Getting Value from Group Interaction” and Steven Rosenbaum: “Curate The Cloud. How Too Much Information Puts Humans Back In Charge”.
Another resource for educational technology/distance education professional development are the Sloan-C workshops and webinars. For UW Colleges/Extension colleagues, the workshops are free of charge. For UWEX, Cooperative Extension colleagues, please send the following information to molly.immendorf@ces.uwex.edu: workshop title, dates and your CES email address. Your information will be used for registration.